PART FIVE

35

He was halfway across the lobby at Freeman’s office – the sun was bright in the Solarium – when Phyllis called out from the reception desk. ‘Oh, Mr Hardy.’

Turning on a dime, he marched to her desk. ‘Oh, Phyllis.’ He stared down at her as she looked up at him. ‘Someday you’re going to smile and I’m going to catch you and tell everybody.’

This wasn’t the time, though. The phones were ringing all over the switchboard and she pointed vaguely off behind her. ‘Mr Russo’s in his office. He wants to see you.’

Yoda figured that proximity to his own august self during the four months of the trial preparation had been proper training to turn Graham into his very own Jedi knight, and after a week off to reacclimatize to civilian life, the ex-defendant had come in to work at the Freeman Building as one of David’s associates. So much for Graham’s worries about being unhirable in the law.

Hardy took a scintilla of pleasure from the fact that Freeman had given Graham Michelle’s old office. The usurper was gone, and with her the memory (well, most of it) of what she’d done, what he hadn’t.

Remaining for a moment at the reception desk, Hardy was deciding if he should go upstairs first, check his answering machine. He was out hustling jobs now, had been all morning, all the past couple of weeks since the trial had ended. The endeavor had not been entirely unsuccessful.

Since the conclusion of Graham’s trial Hardy had reacquired a bit of star status in town. He’d gotten a lot of press, and calls had come in. He was looking forward to facing some of Dean Powell’s minions again; the attorney general had decided to save face with his constituency by prosecuting some (but not all) of the doctors who’d admitted to being involved with their patients’ deaths. Two of these doctors had come to Hardy. He wasn’t sure he wanted assisted suicide to become ‘his’ issue, but on a case-by-case basis a lawyer could do worse – and at best find himself on the side of the angels.

He was still billing far less than he needed to live on, although he had a few months’ reprieve. Hardy had a second time broken the first rule of defense law with Leland Taylor. Confident that he would win with Graham, and therefore that Leland would be favorably disposed to pay, he’d allowed him, after a generous retainer up front, to make monthly payments for Graham’s defense. His trust had been justified and the checks had been coming in every month. There was no reason to suspect that the next one wouldn’t arrive in a couple of weeks.

Since Hardy made three times his normal hourly rate when he was in court (though he’d told Graham it was only double), it looked to be a substantial payment, able to hold him over for a while. But Leland’s payment would come to an end after that, and he’d need more steady work lined up by the time it did. Freeman would probably try to throw something his way again, but all in all he’d prefer now to go it alone, get his own practice into high gear. It was about time, and perhaps some of that work was waiting upstairs.

But his feet took him to Graham’s. He knocked once and tried the door; associates didn’t lock doors in the Freeman Building.

Graham wore a light blue suit and had cut his hair so it just brushed his ears. He looked absurdly young, fit, and handsome, obviously sleeping better than he had for the past six months. The bags had disappeared from under his eyes. But close up Hardy could still discern a sallowness, leftovers from the jail pallor. And something else – a sense of lingering fatigue, or a new worry.

Hardy closed the door behind him. ‘Our dear Phyllis said you wanted to see me.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Two separate words. He blew out sharply. ‘Sal’s stuff is ready to get picked up.’

He gestured meaninglessly, but Hardy thought he knew what he meant. Sal’s ‘stuff,’ both from the evidence locker and the storage bin where the city had moved it, was another emotional hurdle in the marathon that was the aftermath of a murder trial.

Picking up the last of his father’s remains, going back to the Hall of Justice, where for so long he’d been in chains.

Hardy considered for about two seconds. It would probably take him most of the afternoon, but this personal stuff was more important than business. At least, he thought so – he was sure it was among his greatest failings. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give me five minutes to check my messages.’

His voice mail had seven calls.

The third one was from a Jeanne Walsh, who said she was calling about the Joan Singleterry advertisement. She left her number, which Hardy tried immediately, although no one replied.

One of Graham’s first concerns after the verdict – and it endeared him to Hardy – was the distribution of the money to Joan Singleterry’s children if they could find her with one last advertising blitz.

George and Debra had been as skeptical as Hardy would have predicted about the existence of a Joan Singleterry, and Sal’s directive to give her his money.

But realizing that it was probably their best chance to get their hands on Sal’s money without a legal battle, the siblings had told Graham they would let him give Joan Singleterry one last good try if he would split up the funds should it fail. Graham knew that any litigation to preserve the money after that would only eat up most of it, so he finally agreed.

But their last run at Singleterry was to be a good one. Instead of going nationwide with a tiny classified ad in the personals column of thirty or forty publications – Hardy’s earlier strategy -they decided to take out a three-inch box in the sports sections of five of California’s largest newspapers and, for good measure, a two-inch box in The Wall Street Journal. The advertisement, paid for by most of the money Graham had stashed with Craig Ising, would run for one full week. That week had passed on Sunday, two days before.

For Hardy, getting a call on the Singleterry question did not automatically give rise to soaring hopes. He’d received half a dozen similar replies that had proven worthless before the trial. Nevertheless, it did get his blood going. The trial was over, but the failure to achieve any sense of closure had kept him up several nights since the verdict had come in.

Someone had killed Sal Russo and gotten away with it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this connected somehow to Joan Singleterry. And, of course, it didn’t escape him that if Singleterry were connected to a murderer, she herself might already be dead, murdered. The advertisement itself might, in fact, subject her to mortal danger. For this reason they had kept the ad as simple as possible. The name Joan Singleterry, Hardy’s phone number, reward. No mention of Graham, Hardy, Sal. It would either work or it wouldn’t.

Since it was on the way to the Hall of Justice and its evidence lockup, Hardy and Graham stopped off at the facility where the city had put up the rest of Sal’s goods – what there was of them.

Now, within the past few years, with the Moscone Center and plans for the new Giants Stadium in China Basin, the South of Market area had developed pockets of hope, change, life. But a great deal of the real estate between Market Street and the Hall of Justice, and this included the Lions Arms, remained as it had been for decades: seedy, scabrous, and sad.

Graham punched his combination into the box by the cyclone fence and they pulled into the forlorn and soulless monthly storage rental facility. Peeling yellow stucco walls, rust-red corrugated iron doors. They drove slowly down one long row, around a corner, back up another one.

‘Nice place for a party,’ Hardy said. ‘Couple of balloons, maybe a tuba band. A little imagination and you could really have a good time here.’